My Lucky Charm

The leprechauns of Irish folklore are petite, mischief making shoe cobblers in green coats and knickerbockers, who hoard away gold in pots at the bottom of (frequent and stunning) rainbows.  They also have the power to grant three wishes -- or lucky charms -- to humans spritely enough to catch them.  (I've personally never had the pleasure, unless you count M...but I think he's too tall.  And also has yet to grant me three wishes.  Hmmmm, no, definitely not a leprechaun on closer reflection.)  But I digress...

In one of the stranger evenings I've spent in Ireland in my eight years here, M's cousin (let's call him Rick for the sake of this post) agreed to be hypnotized on stage in front of a live audience at a professional hypnotist's show.  Rick did and said lots of amusing things over the course of his hour, but the final act really took the cake.  The hypnotist convinced he and another girl they were proud owners of their VERY OWN LEPRECHAUN, a small being they would see and take full charge of for the next three hours of their lives.  

Rick couldn't have been more delighted to introduce the audience to his [let me be clear here: invisible, completely imaginary] leprechaun, Joe, who (he told us) chased him around the room and, later, followed him to the pub for drinks.  The hypnosis wore off, but the memory!  Ah, the memory stays with all of us, much to Rick's chagrin.

Anyway, given the leprechaun's long and storied tradition here in the Emerald Isle, I've always found it strange that General Mills' Lucky Charms cereal is nowhere to be found on Irish supermarket shelves.  M tells me it was sold here for a few years, to great acclaim, but that it suddenly disappeared from market sometime in the early nineties, leaving a small, but highly committed subset of the Irish population -- including M, his father and sister -- sad and bereft.  

Thus you can understand why my mother's popularity skyrocketed a few weeks ago, when the Irish Postal Service delivered M a "belated birthday" box of Lucky Charms through the mailbox.  His delight was matched only by his fury, when I accidentally let it slip to his sister that there were Charms in the house.  I think this photo says it all: